“Quentin Smith Lakeman, the Government regrets your personal
feelings and sympathizes with your relatives, but finds it necessary to
condemn you at once to euthanasia.”

As the mechanical voice that came from the orifice of the speaker
ceased, Quentin Smith Lakeman turned pale and an icy pang shot
through him. Through the dazzling lights that danced in his brain,
he could see his three companions standing there gasping as a result
of the sudden, crushing sentence.

He had expected some kind of a reward for his year of hard work,
danger, and hardship spent in the service of the Government. Not
that he expected machinery to have any gratitude; but above all, the
machine is logical and just, and there were rules for rewarding special effort such as his.

“Democratia must be promptly and completely destroyed,” the metallic voice of the speaker continued. “From your report of your investigations in that country, it is clear that its people will never consent to
standardize themselves, and that they therefore constitute a menace
to our standardized World Government.”

Quentin—to call him by his “intimate” name, for in the twentysixth century everyone had an intimate name, a family name, and a
public name—was flung down and crushed again by the announcement of the fate of that gallant country in which he had just spent
a year. It seemed that his heart would stop beating then and there,
for Democratia held Martha, who in that one short year had become
more precious than all else in the world. He looked beside him at

Notes for this page

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories.
Contributors: Miles J. Breuer - Author, Michael R. Page - Editor.
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press.
Place of publication: Lincoln, NE.
Publication year: 2008.
Page number: 312.

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